15:30-16:15

Nano-Carbon Materials in Batteries and Solar Cells

Graphene is a two dimensional highly crystalline material and can be described as a single layer of all-sp² carbon atoms packed into a benzenoid ring structure.¹ It is widely used to describe the structural and electronic properties of many carbon-based materials, including graphite, fullerenes and nanotubes. For example, carbon nanotubes are usually thought of as graphene sheets rolled up into nanometre-sized cylinders. In 1859, Brodie discovered that pure graphite, when treated with potassium chlorate and nitric acid, formed crystalline graphitic acid (also known as graphitic oxide or graphene oxide). It is likely that he also made small amounts of graphene and in any case he speculated a new form of carbon was present and proposed the name Graphon (Gr).² However, graphene was not shown to be stable until 2004 when Geim and Novoselov³ described the ‘Scotch tape’ method to peel graphene from samples of crystalline graphite. This mechanical exfoliation method is slow and labour-intensive as an optical microscope is required to hunt for single and few-layer graphene (FLG) amongst the material peeled-off.

Currently, the interest of physicists in graphene is enormous, but the interest of chemists has so far not been as great, probably resulting from the absence of well-established large scale methods to produce graphene. Therefore, the most important role chemists can play is the establishment of an inexpensive and simple wet-chemical method for making graphene. For example, intercalation compounds of graphite have been of interest for many years.⁴ More than 100 reagents can be intercalated into graphite.⁵ In this talk, we describe an intercalation method to make clean graphene that has good electrical properties.

1. J. Wu, W. Pisula, K. Müllen. Chem. Rev., 2007, 107, 718.
2. B. C. Brodie. Phil Trans, 1859,149, 249.
3. K. S. Novoselov, A. K. Geim, S. V. Morozov, D. Jiang, Y. Zhang, S. V. Dubonos, I. V. Grigorieva. Science, 2004, 306, 666.
4. L. B. Ebert. Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 1976, 6, 181.
5. M. S. Dresselhaus, G. Dresselhaus. Adv. Phys, 2002, 51, 1.

Speaker

Dr. Sharali Malik, Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Chair

Dr. Jonathan Hill, MANA Scientist, MANA, NIMS